Drinking Wine May Reduce One's Risk of Diabetes

New study shows that drinking could be beneficial to people with diabetes--but with reservations.

Researchers utilized 70,551 Danish men and women, and followed their drinking habits and conditions for about 5 years. With this, they found that drinking three to four times a week may help with diabetes.

While other studies already supported the notion of alcohol reducing one's chance of diabetes, this particularly showed the optimal frequency of alcohol consumption. And apparently, there's more to frequency than the quantity itself.

Results showed that for both male and female, those who drink seven glasses of wine a week have about 25 to 30 percent lower risk of having diabetes compared to those who drank more or those who don't drink at all. Moreover, beer appears to have different effects on each gender. Men who drink six glasses of beer a week have about 21 percent lower risk of having diabetes while women who drink beer moderately seem to have as much risk as those who don't.

Other factors were also accounted including family history of diabetes and diet as well as their age, sex, level of education and exercise, body mass index, and smoking status. The types of diabetes weren't distinguished, though, in the study.

"Our findings suggest that alcohol drinking frequency is associated with risk of diabetes and that consumption of alcohol over 3-4 days per week is associated with the lowest risk of diabetes, even after taking average weekly alcohol consumption into account,” the researchers wrote in their paper.

This could be due to the polyphenols present in wines that aids in managing human's blood sugars levels.

However, while the results seem exciting, don't get too carried away in drinking. Alcohol drinking is still as dangerous as it sounds. Better safe than sorry!